Amid rising speculation that she is in ill health and is not being allowed to properly consult with her lawyers, imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko learned on Jan. 18 that prosecutors suspect her of involvement in the 1996 gangland-style assassination of Donetsk member of parliament Yevhen Shcherban.
If convicted, Tymoshenko faces life in prison, in addition to the seven years she has been serving since 2011 for signing a gas deal with Russia. Her supporters say the accusations are a continuation of President Viktor Yanukovych’s attempts to destroy his nemesis and ensure that she can never become his political rival again.
In a video released by the General Prosecutor’s Office on Jan. 20, a thin and shaky-looking Tymoshenko signs a paper presented by an unnamed representative of the penitentiary system. It listed three articles of the criminal code that she is suspected of violating.
The authorities’ latest gambit involving Tymoshenko has a lot of implications for Ukraine, most of them bad. The charges would be greeted less skeptically if Ukraine had a credible judicial system. Instead, it has one of the world’s most corrupt judiciaries.
The initial reaction in the Western world seems to be that the murder charges amount to more political persecution of Tymoshenko.
Unless prosecutors can convince the world otherwise, Ukraine’s leaders are likely to face more isolation in the West. The chances of signing an associated agreement with the European Union this year could be reduced and talks could be frozen with the International Monetary Fund over billions of dollars in additional credit that the nation needs.
The charges are also likely to fuel a movement in the West for sanctions targeted against officials who are involved in the alleged political persecution and human rights violations
In any case, the first reaction of the diplomatic community in Kyiv was one of shock and disbelief that Ukraine’s authorities decided to proceed with an old case despite numerous warnings to Yanukovych of the dire consequences for continuing what many in the West see as the hounding of Tymoshenko.
Serving papers
Nevertheless, on the morning of Jan. 18, representatives of the General Prosecutor’s Office made the first attempt to serve a notice to Tymoshenko in the hospital in Kharkiv where she is being treated. The hospital’s chief doctor prevented them from proceeding with any formalities because of his patient’s poor health, said Hryhoriy Nemyria, a prominent member of the opposition and Tymoshenko’s long-time ally.
Tymoshenko is suffering from spinal hernia, a painful back condition, and is undergoing treatment. Her health recently deteriorated, partially due to a hunger strike which she staged last year to protest what she alleged was an unfair Oct. 28 parliamentary election. Serhiy Vlasenko, Tymoshenko’s lawyer, said on Jan. 18 that her health was so bad that he “thought she was dead” when he found her in the shower room on the same day. He said she could not recognize him for two minutes.
She has had limited contact with her defenders, including her daughter. The State Penitentiary Service released statements on Jan. 21 and 22, saying that Tymoshenko is refusing to see them.
From a video recorded by the prosecutors on Jan. 18, Tymoshenko’s health problems are evident. She is looking pale and frail, but is sitting up and talking to the person who came to serve her a notice that she is a murder suspect. “Why are you doing it without a defender?” Tymoshenko is heard asking. The other person does not answer her question, but hands her a paper and asks her to sign a slip.
According to the new criminal procedural code, informing a suspect about their status is no longer qualified as a part of an investigation, and therefore can be done without a defender. “It’s sad to say so, but the law enforcers did not violate her right [for defense],” said one Kyiv lawyer.
Such a notice is served once the preliminary investigation is over. Now, the prosecutors will start an official trial investigation, and will ask Tymoshenko to take part in it, which she has the right to refuse, according to the new code. After that, an indictment will be served and Tymoshenko and her defenders will be allowed to study all of the materials in the case. After this, the case will be ready to go to court.
Representatives of the General Prosecutor’s Office have gone out of their way in recent days to explain that the case is not political. Pshonka, the nation’s chief prosecutor, talked to the press on Jan. 18 and called in a dozen ambassadors on Jan. 20 to explain the case and procedure.
Many representatives of the diplomatic community who talked to the Kyiv Post said that the Western government are unlikely to go into the details of the case because the charges are regarded as persecution of a political opponent.
The Jan. 20 meeting between ambassadors and the prosecutor was mostly interpreted as “preventative” before a meeting of diplomats with member of parliament Arseniy Yatseniuk, who co-chairs United Opposition Batkivshchyna along with Tymoshenko, as well as Nemyria and Vlasenko, scheduled a day later.
Yatseniuk said that the opposition will initiate a parliamentary hearing on Jan. 30 to dismiss Pshonka and a number of other top officials. “I can only add that if there is a more idiotic case than the gas case, they have cooked it up,” Yatseniuk told the Kyiv Post.
Seventeen-year-old case
Tymoshenko’s third case combines new allegations of commissioning a murder with old charges of corruption and abuse of power related to her business activities in the 1990s, when she was known to the world as “the Gas Princess” because she was a prominent and privileged trader of natural gas..
Central in this case is Shcherban, a prominent businessman and parliament member from Donetsk, who was gunned down by masked men who stormed the airport runway in Donetsk on Nov. 3, 1996 as the victim left the plane. His wife and two plane crew members also died, while a customs inspector was wounded in this shooting that is often described by the Western media as “Mafia-style.”
In his statement to the media, Pshonka said that investigators found that Tymoshenko and Shcherban had “a conflict of business interests,” which was related to the supply of natural gas and its price. At the time, Tymoshenko headed United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU), a gas trading company whose operations covered a third of Ukraine’s territory.
Pshonka said Tymoshenko and former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko had a “joint criminal intention,” and agreed that Lazarenko was to find the murderers, while Tymoshenko was to pay for the murder. He claims Tymoshenko paid $2.329 million off her accounts, while Lazarenko paid another half a million in cash.
The business activity of Tymoshenko’s company UESU is a matter of a second criminal case, which is yet to go on trial. In that case, Tymoshenko is accused of causing financial damage to the country by shifting the company’s debt to the budget under a guarantee signed by Lazarenko. A Kyiv city court ruled recently that Ukraine had to pay UESU’s debt to the Russian Federation, and Hr 15 million has been paid so far.
The criminal case that tied Shcherban’s murder to Lazarenko was started in 2000. Lazarenko featured as the main suspect who commissioned the murder. In 2003, Vadym Blotskikh, one of the three gunmen who took part in the murder, was jailed for life. Two of his accomplices, as well as many of the key witnesses in the case, have since died under mysterious circumstances.
Until then, Tymoshenko’s name only came up once in the case, according to the Ukrainian media. Petro Kirichenko, a top aide to Lazarenko, told a court in San Francisco in 2001 that some of the money used to pay for the murder came from Tymoshenko’s companies.
Mustafa Nayyem, a prominent journalist who investigated the case, posted a comment on his Twitter, saying that only $14 million of an estimated $80 to $90 million which was on the account at the time of the transfer, came from Tymoshenko’s companies, though.
How case was handled
“There was no Tymoshenko in this case until a year ago,” says Vlasenko, her lawyer. Ukraine’s prosecutors started talking about Tymoshenko’s involvement in the Shcherban murder case after her jailing in 2011 for allegedly abusing her role as prime minister in reaching the 2009 gas deal with Russia.
Various members of the opposition fear that Tymoshenko’s third case was pulled out now because of the government’s fear of the rulings expected from the European Court on Human Rights. The first court ruling is expected to be favorable to Tymoshenko, and the new accusations were rolled out against her as a preemptive measure,Yatseniuk said on Jan. 18.
But prosecutors maintain the case is genuine.
Renat Kuzmin, first deputy prosecutor general, even wrote letters to the U.S. Senate and to President Barack Obama last year, complaining that U.S. authorities are stalling his investigation by not allowing him to question Lazarenko, a key witness in the case, in the U.S. jail, where he served a sentence for money laundering until November. Kirichenko, the other key witness, also lives in the United States It was Kuzmin’s trip to the U.S. in July last year to talk to Kirichenko that cost him a five-year tourist visa, which was revoked in November.
Many domestic and foreign observers then said that Kuzmin is trying to cook up a case against Tymoshenko where there is none, and that the only way to prove her guilt would be to get Lazarenko’s own testimony, which would implicate himself as well.
Vlasenko, Tymoshenko’s lawyer, said that the case has no substance and is aimed at destroying Tymoshenko. “Yanukovych, ahead of the presidential election, does not need Tymoshenko alive,” he said.
But Pshonka denied allegations any political motive.
“There is no political subtext, there are just the materials of investigation and the arguments of the defense, after studying which the court will take a corresponding decision in the case,” his press service quoted him as saying to Western diplomats.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
